I’m a gun-lover. I enjoy holding anything so finely machined and listening to the quiet click as a finely lubricated cylinder rotates. Of course, I also marvel at the contrast between that beauty and the horror it can cause. At age 13, my father gave me my first shotgun (.410), and I still have it. In fact, I have lots of guns. Actually, I’m not sure I know how many guns I do have?

However, I do know that I have absolutely no AR-15’s nor any assault rifle for that matter. In the Army, I carried an M-16, the predecessor to the AR-15. I found it delivered firepower quickly but jammed almost as quickly. It was not accurate beyond 50 yards or so. It was cool-looking, but that was it!

The real reason I have no assault rifles in my gun cabinet today is that they’re not as useful indoors as outdoors. Turning around to shoot a burglar is more difficult with a longer weapon than a shorter one, such as a pistol. If I want to shoot someone or animal at a distance, I would use a rifle with a scope. If I wanted to kill a large number of people at close range, then an AR-15 is appropriate. If I wanted to shoot a deer at a distance, then an AR-15 is stupid. They have little accuracy at distance, unless “zero’ed” which is difficult for that particular weapon.

The AR-15 is not a weapon for gun-lovers. It is a weapon for gun-nuts!

But, here’s the problem with getting this inferior weapon out of America. It is estimated there may already be ten million assault weapons in this country. You would have to pry a great many “cold, dead fingers” out of trigger guards to confiscate them. Certainly, you could buy some back, but it would be better to make them unfashionable like cigarettes, e.g., public service commercials by “beautiful people” saying it is uncool and unmanly to own one. Be patient!

AR-15’s are not cool . . . they’re stupid!

Then, what do we do about the other 390 million guns?